So speaks Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Shakespeare’s charismatic, crippled villain. Such ability to multitask is perhaps a benefit (drawback?) of being born with teeth.

Richard speaks these lines in “Henry VI (Part III).” But in the Epic Theater Ensemble’s “Richard III,” at the Pershing Square Signature Center, audiences hear them early on in the first scene — one of several adjustments made to the play, including a contemporary setting and a new title: “Born With Teeth.”

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James Wallert and Melissa Friedman in "Born With Teeth."Credit
Steven Boling

This Richard (James Wallert, Epic’s associate artistic director and, with Melissa Friedman, co-founder), smiles more than he snarls, his useless hand curled inside a white glove, one bent leg subtly conveying deformity. As the bodies inexorably pile up around his misshapen one, what is most disturbingly underlined is not his monstrous nature, but the banality of evil surrounding him: advisers thumb smartphones as they plot death, and chow down on breakfast pastries in bloodstained conference rooms.

The men wear summer suits, the women cocktail dresses (costumes by Margaret E. Weedon). They’re all ready to be convinced the killing is for a good cause — until their heads are called for. (Devin E. Haqq’s brutishly amiable Catesby is particularly effective.)

The last “Richard” to make a splash in New York was Kevin Spacey’s outré, spittle-flying portrayal at the Brooklyn Academy of Music last year. But I prefer Epic’s nonspectacle-driven vision, directed by Ron Russell, in which a premium is placed on language (punctuated by a few raucous bursts of music: Guns N’ Roses, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Nine Inch Nails). In a theater this small there’s no need to yell, and the quietness better allows for the word-by-word gorgeousness of Shakespeare’s lines to be heard during a two-and-a-half-hour barrage of speech.

“Born With Teeth” doesn’t get it all right. At times it falls into the “speed and volume equal intensity of emotion” trap and curdles characters’ grief and remorse into something more maudlin. But Richard, coolly bloodless amid all the blood, is a welcome enigma, an actor till the bitter end.

Schedule information on Tuesday with a theater review of “Born With Teeth” at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan, using information from a publicist, misstated the telephone number for tickets. It is (212) 279-4200.